Parente's late change of plans

Alvaro Parente expected to race in Spain last weekend, but in a McLaren GT car, not a single-seater. As Glenn Freeman explains, however, his plans took a very unexpected twist

Around lunchtime last Thursday Alvaro Parente was at the Algarve circuit, working with his day job of developing McLaren's MP4-12C GT racer. The next morning, he was out on track again, but this time it was at Barcelona, and he was strapped into a GP2 car. As you can imagine, making that happen was a bit of a rush.

The former British F3 and World Series by Renault champion only heard of a potential mad Iberian dash on the previous evening, when he received a phone call from Racing Engineering GP2 boss Alfonso de Orleans Borbon offering him the seat vacated by the injured Christian Vietoris.